


Car Crash In Slow Motion

by jackofffrost



Category: How to Train Your Dragon (2010), Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, I haven't written anything in like over a year so please, M/M, Modern Era, help me, hiccup's not in it yet this is like fucking, i'm posting it because i need fEEDBACK, idk it's like eventually gonna be like fuckin cutesy shit like fucking FUCK, it's probably terrible idk, please give me feedback, teehee, uh, unbetaed b u l l s h i t, yeah - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-04 00:13:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1760419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jackofffrost/pseuds/jackofffrost
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU with Jack and his sister (idk if she has a canon name but I'm calling her Sophie because Jamie) as the neighborhood weirdos that everyone avoids because they're Wiccan. Eventually Hiccup's going to come in with Toothless and idk cutesy stuff will happen because that's hOW I LIKE IT.<br/>Major Character Death would obviously be Jack, as this preface is basically a modern-era version of the memories from his teeth.<br/>Enjoy :D</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Preface

**Author's Note:**

> Title from +44's "Little Death" - " _Your car crash in slow motion won't affect the pace on distant stars_ ". I like to think it's about how our existence is insignificant in the vastness of the universe, but experiencing loss and sadness like death brings a little more meaning to the rest of us still bound to our earthly bodies.

Jackson Overland was a quiet and sneaky child, growing up on the streets of Burgess, Pennsylvania.  
I suppose you get that way when your parents raise you Wiccan. The majority of families Jackson came into contact with at school and in his neighborhood were Christian or Catholic, and once they learned that the Overlands were Wiccan, well, Jackson and his little sister Sophie suddenly had a lot less friends.  
In fact, they no longer had friends at all.  
Normally, kids in such positions would turn on their parents for alienating them from other children and families. Not so the Overlands.  
Instead, Jackson and his sister took to sneaking around the neighborhood in their spare time (which there was indeed a surplus of) and frightening the families that had shunned them for their religion.  
He and Sophie got very good indeed at hanging out of trees, popping up behind bushes, and sneaking through creaky fence doors.  
The Overland parents got quite a few complaints once the neighbors caught on.  
Sure, they did give their children stern talking-tos, said that they simply could not continue on bothering the entire neighborhood as they had been.  
“You know, Mom, we wouldn’t have to entertain ourselves like this if those silly close-minded bigots would learn to accept other people like their God told them to,” Jackson quipped one time after a particularly long complaint from Mr. Ferreira two houses down.  
He’d stood in the doorway, a foot from Mrs. Overland’s face, bad breath and spit flying from his mouth as he yelled about how that freaky witch boy had ruined his cabbages, nevermind the fact that it was mid-December and his cabbages weren’t in bloom anyway.  
“Oh, what are you, Jack, the religion police?” Mrs. Overland shot back at her son. “You’re just as bad as them, you know, taunting them for being rude, it’s really quite hypocritical of you!”  
Jack rolled his eyes so far back into his head that his mother feared they may pop right out of his skull.  
“Don’t roll your eyes at me, Jackson, you know playing tricks on everyone all the time is mean.”  
“Whaaaateverrr,” Jack groaned. He smirked then, his way of showing his mother that he took what she was saying to heart, even if he didn’t necessarily agree with it. Eighteen-year-olds are strange that way.  
Jack turned around and grabbed a coat. “I’m taking Sophie out to skate on the lake, okay, Mom?” he said as he walked away.  
“That’s fine, so long as you’re actually going to go skating.”  
Jack made a gross sort of vomiting noise in response.  
“Be careful!” Mrs. Overland called as she heard the back door swing open.  
“We will!” Jack’s voice shouted back.

Not an hour later, as the shadows began to grow longer, Jack was standing on the lake, watching his sister’s eyes brimming with tears as the ice began cracking beneath her skates.  
“Jack… I’m scared,” Sophie said, her voice trembling.  
“I know,” Jack responded calmly. “I know… but you’re gonna be alright. You’re not gonna fall in.”  
The gears in his mind were turning full speed, desperately thinking of a way to get his little sister to safety.  
A glance to the right showed a strange, curved tree branch of sorts, and suddenly he knew exactly what to do.  
“We’re gonna have a little fun instead.”  
“No, we’re not!” shouted Sophie. She gasped as the ice cracked more.  
“Would I trick you?”  
“Yes, you always play tricks!”  
“Well, alright,” he conceded, deciding to be more careful with her in the future.  
“Well, not this time. I promise. I promise, you’re gonna be fine.”  
Jack caught her gaze, made sure she could see in his eyes he was telling her the truth.  
“You have to believe in me.”  
Sophie smiled slightly at that, and Jack bounced right back into his normal joking demeanor.  
“You wanna play a game?” he asked his sister, beaming at her. “We are going to play hopscotch! Like we play every day,” he said, as if she needed reminding. Hopscotch was a silly pastime in between pranks on neighbors and schoolmates, a way for Sophie to join in on her classmates’ fun even though they excluded her. Jack was more than happy to play with her; anything for Sophie.  
Anything.  
Jack took a deep breath.  
“It’s as easy as one –“ – a step right – “- two –“ – another step – “- three!”  
Jack grabbed the strange branch and used it to yank Sophie off the cracked ice and toss her back towards the edge of the lake, where the ice was thicker and they could walk safely back to land.  
At least, that was the plan.  
Sophie tumbled across the top of the frozen lake, stopping just before the bank, smiling and laughing, shocked yet completely unsurprised how her brother had saved her, until she saw where he now stood – exactly the spot he had just saved her from.  
“Jack, no –!”  
But it was too late. Jack hadn’t realized where he was standing, and in his excitement he took a step forward, wanting to run and grab Sophie and carry her back home to warmth and safety, when with one final, earsplitting CRACK!, the ice finally broke apart and Jack was swallowed up by the dark, icy depths.


	2. Chapter 0

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mr. and Mrs. Overland come home to find Sophie crying on the stairs and Jack nowhere to be seen.

Sophie ran home, tumbling through the back screen door. “Mo – Mom!” she cried. Her face was burning from the cold, her ankles in danger of twisting out of their sockets as she ran through the house on her skates.  
“Mom – Dad!” Sophie could barely make out the words herself; surely no one else would be able to decipher what she was saying, but even so, wouldn’t her tone infer to her parents that something was horrifically, terribly, unfixably wrong? Wouldn’t one of her parents hear the agony in her voice and come to her aid?  
Sophie finally collapsed at the base of the stairs, the high steps proving to be too much for her in her skates. She tripped on the bottom stair, landed on her chin, and bit her tongue so hard it actually started gushing blood. Vaguely, Sophie thought she felt the pain of it, but her brain was so overloaded with Jack fell in Jack fell in Jack fell in that she couldn’t quite register it.   
The front door opened then, revealing Mr. and Mrs. Overland carrying bags of groceries. When they spotted their daughter bleeding and crying on the steps, however, they dropped everything and ran to her.   
“Sweetie! Sophie, sweetie, are you alright?” Mr. Overland asked, pushing Sophie’s hair out of her face.  
“Sophie, you’re bleeding, what happened? Where’s Jack?” asked Mrs. Overland, looking around for her son.   
“Jack – Ja – fe – fell –“  
Mrs. Overland took off through the back door that Sophie had left hanging open, running as hard and fast as she could to the lake.  
The twigs left scratches on her face, frozen dirt collected on her shoes, and ice nipped viciously at her nose, but all Mrs. Overland could think was Jack Jack Jack, he was in the water, he was in the lake, he fell in and didn’t come back out and what if what if what if –  
She burst through one final icy bush and stumbled onto the frozen bank. Halfway out, she could see the giant hole in the ice and the dark water beneath it, eerily still, and so cold it actually let off steam.   
“No,” she breathed, running onto the lake, “no!”  
Sliding softly towards the edge of the hole, she pulled her phone out and flipped on the flashlight app, trying desperately to peer into the water’s depths, begging the universe to let her find him breathing. The light on her phone wasn’t strong enough, she could only see about a foot deep, but the water’s calm and the lack of bubbles were proof enough of her worst fears.   
Behind her, Mr. Overland and Sophie – now wrapped in a fleece blanket with a wad of gauze stuffed in her mouth – watched her from the bank. They needed no words, no verbal confirmation. Seeing Mrs. Overland sitting by the hole in the ice, completely still, a blank, empty expression on her face, it was all they needed.   
Jack was dead, and it was all Sophie’s fault.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay first of all, thank you for all the views the previous chapter got. It got bookmarked by at least one person last I checked and that's extremely awesome. I hope all the views enjoyed it too.   
> Anyway, this is basically an in-between chapter, a little more than a preface, but also not quite a full-on chapter of its own. The idea was to swap over sort of slowly into Sophie's POV and then beat it against your skull with the final line, which was meant to hurt you by the way.   
> Basically, Sophie is the main driving force behind the next chapter and the main character of it as well, so I wanted to end Chapter Zero on a painful note.  
> I hope you like it!  
> I"m 2 hours into a 4 hour long bus ride, so it's entirely possible I'll post another chapter by the end of the night.


	3. Haze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm doing most of this work on a site called 750words.com, it's pretty cool because it forces me to write when I feel lazy (so I keep up my streak!) and it analyzes what I'm writing and gives me a rating and everything based on what words I use and stuff, so this chapter ended up being rated PG, but some of the other chapters I've been working on (and some stuff I've just kind of spit out just to make the day) has been up to NC-17 and that's not even for sex.
> 
> But yeah, I hope you're enjoying the story so far, and I'll be updating more often I hope since I'm only doing part time at work now instead of full time so I have a lot more time to do things I want to do, so hell yeah.

Sophie didn’t sleep. She didn’t eat. She didn’t speak a word or make a sound at all, save for screaming violently when the doctors told her she would have to stay in the hospital during Jack’s funeral. Her parents had managed to convince the doctors to let her out for the day only on the promise that they’d bring her back immediately after the proceedings. The morning of the funeral passed with barely a word spoken between the three remaining Overlands. Mr. and Mrs. Overland arrived at the hospital to pick up their daughter; they brought a plain black dress from home for her to change into, with white lace trim around the neck and wrists. Sophie wondered where it came from; she had never seen it before, and it fit her poorly. It was too long at the hem and too loose on her arms, clearly designed for a taller, older person. She didn't let it get to her, though, as she had more important problems at the moment. In a matter of minutes, she would be standing before a priestess at the Burgess Pond where Jack had died, between her mother and father, where they would be saying their final goodbyes to Jack - or rather, Jack's memory. They were never able to find him (Sophie refused to say "his body"; it othered him, made him something other than her big brother, like he was a thing instead of a person) in the lake, so there was nothing to cremate (Wiccan burials were tricky; Wiccans prefer to be buried without a casket, to be closer to Mother Earth; in most states in the U.S., no-casket burials are illegal, so many Wiccans opt to be cremated instead), which was making closure a little harder for Sophie. Sophie had been to a few funerals before. Their uncle's, two grandparents, a few family friends, some Wiccan, some not. Saying goodbye permanently was always a hard thing to do, especially for someone who's barely reached their teens. Sophie still had trouble accepting the death of her grandfather that had occurred nearly three years previously, and she wasn't nearly as close with him as she had been with Jack.

Jack's funeral had garnered a fairly small attendance. Sophie and her parents; the remaining two grandparents; a few relatives; and of course, their High Priestess. As they arrived and formed a circle (on the edge of the lake, as standing on the lake itself would be a bad idea for those who wished to remain alive), they gave their condolences to the Overlands. While the parents graciously accepted the kind words, Sophie was unable to do more than stare blankly at anyone who tried to offer comfort. All Sophie could do was focus on the fact that nobody would be here right this moment if she hadn't begged Jack to take her skating, begged him to let her run and play on the ice, skated off into the middle of the lake without waiting for him to check it...

Mrs. Overland nudged Sophie gently into the circle as the Priestess began her readings. Sophie paid her no attention, listening instead to the intense silence of the winter all around them. She could hear small gusts of wind rushing through the bare trees, whispering secrets she couldn't understand. Small blobs of snow would slip off branches and make faint fwoomp sounds, and here and there a bird that wouldn't migrate would let out a few notes of a warm melody. Sophie listened hard to the sounds of the earth, hoping to hear someone or something say it wasn't real, that she'd wake up in a few moments and Jack would be in the room across the hall, snoring quietly with his blanket tangled in his legs and his arm dangling over the side of his mattress, but no such things were said. Jack was gone, and Sophie was all alone now.

It was at the point in the ceremony where everyone in the circle took turns saying things to or about Jack. Everyone else had said their piece, and now it was Sophie's turn.

"Go on, Soph," Mrs. Overland said softly. "Jack's waiting to hear from you."

Sophie startled out of her nature trance. She glanced at her mother and father in turn, then at each guest. Nervously, she stepped towards the lake itself, away from the circle.

"Sophie, honey-" her dad started, but she ignored him, and instead of returning to him, she took a few tentative steps towards the black hole in the ice, which was beginning to frost over once more.

"Jack," whispered Sophie, "I'm sorry. I can fix this. I will fix this."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was going to make this longer but I feel bad not having posted for almost a month, so here you go! Hope you enjoy it (: Thanks for reading this far, I hope we all make it to the end:D

**Author's Note:**

> THIS WAS COMPLETELY UNBETA'D SO IF THERE'S GRAMMATICAL/SPELLING ERRORS PLEASE POINT THEM OUT TO ME  
> I relied on Word and my own superior grammar skills (I'm good at that shit when I want okay) to keep everything looking good and making sense, so if I missed something, or if you think something could have been worded better, please let me know! I crave feedback, I really like the idea that I've got but I want to know that people are interested in reading it before I devote all my free time to it, you know? :P  
> Also, thank you for reading! :D


End file.
